The Music of Lizzie Strikes a Sympathetic Tone for the Famous Killer
The four-line Lizzie Borden rhyme is graphic, if not particularly sympathetic. A woman commits a double homicide and the victims are her own parents. The real Borden was acquitted of the 1892 murders, but her legacy was condemned to the role of cold-blooded killer. Sundance selection Lizzie, starring Chloë Sevigny and Kristen Stewart, revisited the infamous ...
Sundance 2018: A Conversation with the Director and Cast of Daring Heist Film American Animals
Whether it’s the reluctant exploitation of a super skill in Baby Driver or the stylish and sophisticated execution of Ocean’s Eleven, heist movies are an American cinematic staple. The masterminded plans, daring escapes, and thrilling shootouts look easy on screen, but what would happen in a real life do-it-yourself caper? Enter Sundance selection, American Animals. ...
Sundance 2018: American Animals Composer Captures Four Students’ Wild Alter Egos
A tribal orchestration sprinkled with sounds of the wild opens American Animals to the contrasting sight of establishing shots of Lexington, Kentucky. Composer Anne Nikitin immediately sets the tone for the rambunctious docudrama about a daydream gone too far. A group of college aged men concoct a movie style plan to steal valuables from a ...
Sundance 2018: The Tale Composer Delicately Threads a Fragile Story of Adolescent Abuse
For decades, documentarian Jennifer Fox had convinced herself that the sexual abuse she’d suffered as a child was consensual. In revisiting her memories and the events under the light of adulthood, Fox had a reckoning with the true nature of the events. Her memoir, starring Laura Dern as Jennifer, is laid bare in Sundance premiere ...
Sundance 2018: Keira Knightley Illuminates Lush Portrayal of French Literary Icon in Colette
In 2015, director Wash Westmoreland and his husband, Richard Glatzer, watched the Oscars from a hospital room at Cedars Sinai. Julianne Moore won Best Actress for her role in their film Still Alice. Glatzer passed away days later following a battle with ALS. The next project he wanted to pursue was Colette, and Westmoreland honored ...
Sundance 2018: Writer/Director Babis Makridis on Exploring an Addiction to Sadness in his Surprisingly Funny Pity
Chatting with Greek filmmaker Babis Makridis is a little like being in one of his films. He’s dry, soft spoken, casually funny, and very smart. In his latest film, Pity, about a man who can only experience happiness by being unhappy, Makridis has delivered that rare treat—a story that doesn’t flinch at life’s paradoxes, absurdities and miseries, ...
Sundance 2018: The Tale Sheds Light on Adolescent #MeToo Victims
The combined courage and talent of Jennifer Fox displayed at the premiere of The Tale was overwhelming. The audience couldn’t stand and applaud long enough. Caroline Libresco, Senior Programmer and Director, Special Programs, introduced the film saying, “This movie is inventing a new cinematic language for an ineffable human experience.” Fox, a celebrated documentarian, began ...
Sundance 2018: This Close Director on Shoshannah Stern & Josh Feldman’s Groundbreaking Series, the First by two Deaf Creators
Director Andrew Ahn made at splash at Sundance in 2016 with his feature Spa Night, which focused on a closeted Korean-American teenager who takes a job at a Korean spa to help his struggling family, and ends up discovering a underground world of gay sex that terrifies and thrills him. Ahn was back at Sundance this year for ...
Sundance 2018: Trans Filmmaker Luis De Filippis on Their Bracing Directorial Debut For Nonna Anna
Toronto-based filmmaker Luis De Filippis’ short film For Nonna Anna focuses on the intergenerational relationship between a trans grandchild and their aging, ailing grandmother. Selected for Sundance’s Shorts Program, For Nonna Anna is a tender, achingly wrought stunner in miniature, one told by a filmmaker of remarkable skill and compassion. “It is imperative as Trans people that we ...
Sundance 2018: Reinaldo Marcus Green’s Monsters and Men is an Astonishment
Reinaldo Marcus Green’s Monsters and Men is breathtaking. This is the kind of film that makes a festival so important—Green, his cast and his crew deserve as big a spotlight as possible, and few festivals offer one as intense Sundance. Told from varying perspectives from a tirelessly inquisitive handheld camera, Monsters and Men takes a ...
Sundance 2018: American Animals is a Gripping Heist with Real Consequence
American Animals premiered at Sundance and lived up to the pre-festival chatter. Seeing Danny Ocean mastermind a Las Vegas casino job is engrossing, but this film has a realism that drips with anxiety. In American Animals, four young men came up with a very bad idea that goes horribly wrong. And it worked. The plan ...
Sundance 2018: Blindspotting Captivates with a Powerful Message
The screenings at Sundance got underway with the premiere of Blindspotting, and what a way to start things off. The film, written by and starring Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal, had a lot to say and they chose their words with absolute precision. In a feat that seems mathematically impossible on paper, the film isolated ...
Sundance 2018: Robert Redford Addresses #MeToo and ‘Fake News’ in Kick Off Press Conference
Sundance 2018 has officially begun. Founder and President of Sundance Film Festival, Robert Redford, opened the festival from the historic Egyptian theater. Redford told reporters that the Egyptian was the only theater in Park City when he began the Sundance Film Festival in 1985. Inspired by the discovery of King Tut’s tomb in the 1920s, ...
Sundance 2018: Burden Cinematographer on Lensing a Timely Look at Racism in America
Australian cinematographer Jeremy Rouse moved his wife and two children to a small town in rural Georgia in order to join director Andrew Heckler’s debut drama Burden. The film, based on an astonishing true story, is a part of this year’s Sundance Film Festival’s U.S. Dramatic Competition, and is one of the most timely films screening here—in a ...
Sundance 2018: Talking to The King Composer About How Elvis’s Life Mirrors Modern America
If you were going to try and diagnose America’s current overall political and social health through the lens of Elvis Presley’s life, you’d want documentarian Eugene Jarecki as your filmmaker. And for Jarecki, composer Robert Miller was the man he tapped when he thought about how to create a score that would help elucidate the connections ...
Sundance 2018: 10 Films We’re Excited About
Call Me By Your Name rocketed off the Sundance Film Festival stage last January and is still soaring through awards season, likely to be a major player once the Oscar nominations are announced on January 24. Hot off receiving three Golden Globe nominations, Call Me By Your Name is just one very recent example of a ...
